Humble Fabric Takes Center Stage His Detractors, the Refusal in June 1939 to Take in Any of the More Than Felt Is the Feel-Good Fabric of All Time

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Roosevelt And the Jews: A Debate Rekindled

By PATRICIA COHEN RANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT’S legacy has been slid back under the mi- croscope recently as his ef- forts to pull the country out ofF the Great Depression are scruti- nized. Now a piece of his foreign pol- icy is also being re-evaluated in a soon-to-be published book that up- ends a widely held view that he was indifferent to the fate of Europe’s Jews, and asserts that new evidence shows that the president pushed for an ambitious secret rescue plan before the war began. The book, an edited collection of of- ficial documents, diaries, internal memos and more, contends that Roosevelt hatched a scheme in 1938 to rally the world’s democracies and relocate millions of European Jews in undeveloped areas in Latin America and Africa. “It is a book that will change the consensus about the role of Presi- dent Roosevelt,” said Deborah Lip- stadt, a leading expert on the Holo- caust, who has read some sections. It “compels historians — both those who have vilified F.D.R. and those who have sanctified him — to rethink their conclusions.” The book, “Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945,” will undoubt- FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES edly reignite the charged debate over whether Roosevelt could have done more to rescue millions of Jews, Gyp- sies, gay people, dissidents and oth- ers who died in Nazi death camps. To Humble Fabric Takes Center Stage his detractors, the refusal in June 1939 to take in any of the more than Felt is the feel-good fabric of all time. Sturdy, cos- show’s half dozen 19th- and early 20th-century pre- 900 Jews aboard the ocean liner St. seting, beautiful, shape-shifting, dye-friendly, it Fashioning Felt, at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, includes Janice Arnold’s “Palace Yurt,” cursors to contemporary felt is a Mongolian tea cere- Louis who were seeking a haven af- serves many purposes and offers countless pleas- mony rug whose salmon-pink field is dotted with pin- above, composed of white-on-white wall hangings. ter Germany’s deadly Kristallnacht ures. Some but certainly not all of its latest uses are wheels of circles in red, green and white pinwheel is much more emblematic of the outlined in “Fashioning Felt,” an illumi- (tie-dyed), and an Iranian carpet whose familiar Per- United States’ response. Many of ROBERTA nating exhibition of around 70 items — sian patterns, freed from the loom, have a wonderful those passengers ultimately died. gredients were and remain animal wool, soap and mostly furnishings and garments — at the drizzled, drifting effect. In contrast, an Uzbek carpet SMITH water mashed into a kind of pulp (initially by bare This is the second of a three-vol- Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. from the same time magnifies such motifs into big, ume set of Mr. McDonald’s papers Felt’s purely artistic possibilities are also feet), then dried under pressure and made into ev- flat silhouettes. being published by Indiana Universi- ART being explored in scattered shows at New erything from caps to rugs and capes to yurts. REVIEW We probably all have felt-related memories, and ty Press in association with the Unit- York galleries. On the scale of material culture, felt’s elemental maybe even some felt phobia. Mine include poodle ed States Holocaust Memorial Mu- Though you may never have thought much about longevity places it somewhere between wine-making seum. Mr. McDonald was the high felt, there’s a lot more to it than you’d expect. One of (the stomping) and ceramics (the malleable natural skirts, varsity letters, blackboard erasers, pool tables commissioner for refugees for the the first manmade textiles, it requires almost no spe- material rendered useful by drying or baking). Like and the undersides of lamps and heavy ashtrays that League of Nations, the chairman of a cial tools, certainly not a loom. It began to be made the smooth surfaces and glazes of ceramics, felt’s I was told to handle carefully. That felt’s edges were presidential advisory committee on 8,000 years ago, a millennium before the earliest wet-dry process and variety of colors encouraged the all, in essence, selvage — no hems required! — at- Continued on Page 30 forms of weaving. Its fairly unadulterated natural in- human yen for decoration. Among the Cooper-Hewitt Continued on Page 27

Beamed From Tomorrow Escapes, in Its New Home PHILADELPHIA — The jazz and bandleader, but also con- but always existed, coming to H A V E N S 3 3 AMERICAN JOURNEYS 35 musician Sun Ra, ambassador stantly surprising. One minute Earth from outer space, specifi- Miami Beach remains a magnet Buggies and back roads in from the Airy King- he’s playing elevator schmaltz; cally the planet Saturn. Like for the affluent. Amish Indiana. HOLLAND dom World Tomorrow, then he’s making you float on air; many immigrants, he was self-in- creator of Enterplane- then he’s making you deaf. I love vented, but radically so. He re- COTTER tary Solar Exploding that he was a sharp dresser, sort jected being black or white or Music, and founder of of kingly, sort of queenly, in faux American or even human. He ART REVIEW the Astro Intergalac- leopard-skin capes and miner’s opted for extraterrestrial and tic Infinity Arkestra, hats with lights. wore his otherness like a crown. is a hero of mine. I also admire him for tran- You’ll find evidence for all of To my ears he was not only a scending existential categories. this in “Pathways to Unknown genius composer, keyboardist He insisted he hadn’t been born, Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chi- cago’s Afro-Futurist Under- ground, 1954-68,” a small, piquant exhibition of art, writing and ephemera related to his life at the Institute of Contemporary Art here. Although he kept the precise facts of his early life under wraps, documents show that he was beamed down to Birmingham, Ala., in 1914 as Herman Poole Blount, affectionately known as Sonny. In 1952 he changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra, Ra being

the ancient Egyptian solar god. WILLIAM ZBAREN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 27 Inside Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s B O O K S 3 1 ART IN REVIEW 29 Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68 Dwight Garner on A newly svelte A sketch by James Bryant for a “Vanished Smile,” an International Fine Art record cover is part of this show account of the most Fair takes up residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. spectacular art robbery in the Park Avenue

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY of 1911. Armory. C M Y K Nxxx,2009-05-01,C,027,Bs-4C,E1

THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2009 N C27 A Humble Fabric Takes Center Stage, for Once

From Weekend Page 25 tracted people like me who don’t sew. Though I think that the closest I came to actually wearing felt was a yurtlike bathrobe with large red, cut-out and flocked tomatoes on its enormous pock- ets — a Christmas gift from my mother at the onset of my adolescence. During my first years as a New York pedestrian, I gained a new appreciation FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES of felt’s wondrous warmth and density through a simple pair of innersoles that winterized and then outlasted some reli- ONLINE: SLIDE SHOW able rain boots. Several of my favorite Additional images from “Fashioning garments have been made of boiled Felt” at the Cooper-Hewitt National wool, felt’s second cousin, including Design Museum: sweaters that I downsized (not always on purpose) in the washer or dryer. nytimes.com/design Then there’s my sizable collection of yard-sale afghans. Its pride is a blue- Felt has a history in postwar art, checked survivor of a previous owner’s starting with Josephs Beuys’s use of it washer-dryer experimentation. At first in his performances, abstract sculp- I thought it was a rug. I snapped it up tures and his dour felt suit pieces. And for $10 and hope to be buried with it. few things say Process Art like Robert And did I mention the felt-covered Morris’s elephantine, industrial- couch in my living room? It is seasonal, strength felt wall pieces and Barry used only during the cooler months. LeVa’s scattered floor pieces of felt The Cooper-Hewitt show dwells scraps, with or without shattered glass. largely in the gap between art and func- The less dour aesthetic possibilities of tional objects. Aside from room dividers felt hit me several years ago via an un- forgettable cluster of little felt reliefs hanging in a hallway of an art building at Virginia Commonwealth University No woof or warp, but a JAMES ESTRIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES in Richmond, Va. Nothing special, just long history predating Felt art now on display in Manhattan an assignment from a textiles class, but includes the multiheaded “Bold as the variety of color, textures and forms poodle skirts. seemed like a remarkably fresh way to Love,” above, by Adam Parker merge painting and sculpture. Wow. Smith, at Broadway Windows at Major in that. Broadway and East 10th Street; a At the moment, the New York galler- by Scofidio & Diller and Janice Arnold, a “Textile Stones” cushion, right, by ies showcasing felt include David Zwir- neat hanging cradle by Soren Ulrick Pe- Pernell Fagerlund; and an Uzbek ner, at 525 West 19th Street, where Adel tersen and a beautiful large rug in carpet, both at the Cooper-Hewitt Abdessemed has used expanses of bands of Rothko red by Stephanie Ode- National Design Museum. beautiful white felt to stretch three gard, there is remarkably little here that small airplanes into extended snakelike I can imagine living with or looking at bodies. I also recommend two new for extended periods of time. It would sculptures by Ronnie Fisher on view in have been nice to have had some slight- “Old Dogs, New Tricks,” at K.S. Art at 72 leftover felt scraps built up in horizontal ly more down-to-earth applications that Walker Street in TriBeCa, along with chips like shale, is a sound-proofing so- weren’t at least 100 years old, rather impressive sculptures by John Newman lution, and it recycles. than the parade of exotic garments, and paintings by Hermine Ford. Mr. Among the show’s most interesting weirdly shaped furniture and wall hang- Fisher, who is best known for making themes is hybridization: the increasing ings. aggressively utilitarian fountains and practice of combining felt with other lamps from found, mostly metal objects, There are extremes in size, from a felt materials, whether fabric, plastic or necklace by Birgit Daamen embedded seems to have been shaken to his roots even light-emitting diode lights (a rug by some kind of SpongeBob Square- with coral beads to a giant red-brown designed by Yvonne Laurysen and Erik Pants epiphany. His new sculptures are installation by Claudy Jongstra that Mantel). Jorie Johnson and Clifton Mon- soft stuffed forms sewn from felt and demonstrates degrees of feltness, raw tieth collaborate; she makes felt ves- other hardy fabrics like vinyl imitation to cooked, through different textures sels; he lines them with lacquer. Their leather; they achieve an unlikely stasis and wools, straight to curly. It reaches a works have a striking contrast of matte between the sexual and the toylike, not height of about eight feet, resembles the and shiny and hard and soft, although to mention abstraction and representa- maw of a whale and invites but doesn’t their practical applications are hard to tion. accommodate physical contact. Add gauge. Janice Arnold has draped the Then there is “Bold as Love,” a show seats and it could be a pair of booths in a museum’s conservatory with “Palace of the work of the young artist Adam fancy restaurant — say, the Siberian Yurt,” an imposing installation of white- Parker Smith that can be seen around Tearoom. Just a thought. on-white wall hangings, each combining the clock at Broadway Windows, a dis- There are also extremes in frivolity felt with silk, linen, mohair or Tercel in play-only curatorial space in the win- and function, some from the same different patterns and motifs. The same dows of a New York University building source, as with Kathryn Walter, a de- principle is found on a smaller scale in at Broadway and East 10th Street in signer whose family has been in the tex- the fashion designs of Christine Birkle Greenwich Village. Inspired by Goya tile business for four generations. Ms. and Françoise Hoffmann. And the felt- (and the Chapman brothers), Mr. Smith Walter’s gray felt molding bulkily mim- covered stones of Stephanie Forsythe is showing three dozen life-size severed ics the fluted and floral relief designs of and Todd MacAllen are an unusually heads, mounted on spikes, and more co- traditional ceiling molding, which compact combination. They come in medic than gory because they are made seems hard enough to keep dusted as it gray, green and white and seem the per- entirely of felt. The heads echo too is. But her “Striations” wall, made of fect thing to lie down on if one’s back is closely the work of Tom Friedman and tight. They must be better than tennis Ryan Johnson, but they are vivacious “Fashioning Felt’’ continues through balls. These are not to be confused with and various and make good use of felt’s Sept. 7 at the Cooper-Hewitt National Pernelle Fagerlund’s “Textile Stones” colors, mutability and hem-free edges. Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street; (212) cushions, which are made entirely of In a way, their main subject is the won- 849-8400, cooperhewitt.org. felt. der of the material itself. FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES Beamed From Tomorrow

ham, a teenager with spiritual interests pect of album production, from record- From Weekend Page 25 similar to his own — both were members ing, to pressing disks, to packaging and And as a performer he became Sun Ra. of an occult, utopian black separatist se- sales. He had at least as many talents as cret society — but with the organization- They paid close attention to the ap- monikers. In addition to being a musi- al and promotional abilities he lacked. pearance of the product, ensuring that it cian, he was a poet, philosopher, painter, Partly because both men were propo- looked handmade and offbeat. Sun Ra graphic designer, street lecturer, activist nents of black self-sufficiency, do-it- created some of the early record jackets and entrepreneur, as well as a numerol- yourself was their business style. This himself. His specialty was fancy letter- ogist and mystic. He worked out the fate meant they could entirely monitor their ing with abstract flourishes, as seen in of the universe through interpretive product. Gradually they shaped the im- the colored pencil drawing of his name, readings of the Bible, the Koran and age of the musician who would become as large as a Turkish emperor’s tugra, Flash Gordon comic books, concluding Sun Ra, and of the band he would lead, on the cover of “Art Forms of Dimen- that “the only way this world can be first called 8 Rays of Jazz, then the sions Tomorrow.” saved from being completely destroyed Arkestra. (The respelling may be based A few other artists — LeRoy Butler, is through music.” on the way “orchestra” was pronounced James Bryant and one who signed him- With that in mind, he composed and in Alabama; it also incorporates the self Aye — later contributed more played without cease for 60 years, first name Ra written forward and back- graphically dynamic images. But most of the designs were by Claude Danger- in Birmingham, then in Chicago and ward.) field, a self-taught painter and a high New York, and finally in Philadelphia, It was at this point, in the early 1950s, school friend of several Arkestra musi- where he lived until just before his death that a Sun Ra “look” for the band started cians. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY in 1993. to come into focus: a mystical-historical- He was responsible for the art on He also recorded, packaged and tried comical blend of science fiction, Egyptol- A 1960 design by Claude Dangerfield for a record cover. Mr. Dangerfield’s many of the albums made in Chicago to sell his music, which, because it was ogy, Southern mummery, Freemasonry, work consistently embodied the Arkestra’s space-age aesthetic. nightclub theatrics (costumed acts were and later in New York — “Super-Sonic unconventional, wasn’t easy to do. It is Jazz,” “We Travel the Spaceways,” “Sun the practical side of his career that this big at the time) and African masquer- the Chicago years he was still a local ade, with rakishly flipped-brim Robin Ra and his Solar Arkestra Visits Planet exhibition of album jacket designs, post- Earth.” And it was his work that most phenomenon, performing mostly in ONLINE: SLIDE SHOW Hood caps — later beanies with propel- ers, news releases and socio-spiritual consistently embodied the Arkestra’s black clubs on the South Side. Even lers — thrown in. Additional images from “Pathways manifestos, most of them from his for- signature space-age theme. when he moved to New York City in To maintain complete control over the to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra” at the mative years in Chicago, focuses on. The theme had wide currency in cold 1965, his audience didn’t change much at increasingly experimental music, Sun Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Organized self-promotion was not one war America, from doomsday Holly- first. His mercurial shifts, from bebop to Ra and Mr. Abraham created their own of his skills. He was too reserved and too wood films to pop songs like “The Pur- improvisation to Disney film tunes, with Art: much an outsider. Shy and studious as a label. They called it El Saturn Records ple People Eater.” But the fantasy of Latino and African riffs folded in, left nytimes.com/design youth, he got by on his prodigious key- and, using local black-owned businesses traveling into outer-space blackness to earthlings confused. And when the board talent. But a visionary experience as a resource, they oversaw every as- find other, friendlier future worlds, had a Arkestra stood on a stage and instru- he claimed to have had gives an idea of specific pertinence to black nationalist mentally screamed at listeners, people plays in one of the galleries. The film his sense of apartness. thinking at the time. (When Sun Ra said, headed for the door. fleetingly places Sun Ra in the context of “My whole body changed into some- “Space is the place,” certain people Nor was Sun Ra himself always easy the civil rights and Black Power move- thing else,” he reported many years af- knew where that place was.) In the 1990s to take. Although a certain adorableness ments, which is right. But the best, most ter. “I could see through myself, I wasn’t this trend was retrospectively given the eventually accrued to him, he could be moving part is a long sequence in which in human form.” He said he was taken on name Afro-Futurism, and Mr. Danger- heroically furious in the pre-Black Pow- the Arkestra is heard rehearsing for a an intergalactic trip by creatures with field’s art, like Sun Ra’s persona, embod- er Chicago years, and speak with a Carnegie Hall concert. “one little antenna on each ear,” who told ies it. prophet’s wrathful, rebuking voice. It The band — based in Philadelphia and him to leave school because “the world There’s quite a bit of Mr. Dangerfield comes through loud and clear in five still active today — is large here, maybe was going into complete chaos.” in the exhibition, which was originally typed broadsheets on view in the show. two dozen men; the percussion section It’s always a little hard to tell if Sun Ra organized by John Corbett, Anthony He used them as scripts for street lec- is huge. Basically what we hear is a was being serious or not, but a sense of Elms and Terri Kapsalis for the Hyde tures, and in them highly conflicted ra- grand chorale of drums, chimes, bells alienation seemed to be part of his Park Art Center in Chicago. The work cial polemics take the form of slicing, ag- and everything else. The Arkestra has makeup. In Chicago, where he went to encompasses not only his original jacket gressive wordplay that spares no one’s become a celestial biofeedback machine, find work after World War II, he met the designs, but also hand-painted color sep- feelings, white or black. He was speak- a thundering angel band, and Sun Ra, ideal business partner in Alton Abra- arations and some of the plates used for ing from one step beyond all that. “I nev- crowned, robed and serene on keyboard, the first printings. Seen in the light of the er wanted to be part of planet Earth,” he is at its center, as majestic as an aging “Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, digital present, they are time-worn arti- once said, “And I did everything not to Rembrandt. El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Un- facts, but together they give a vivid be part of it.” This was true. As the rhythms build, level out and derground, 1954-68” continues through sense of the grass-roots, cottage-indus- The one thing he did that kept him build again, you feel they could go on for- Aug. 2 at the Institute of Contemporary try enterprise that El Saturn Records here was make transcendent music. You ever. And you wish they would until, like Art, 118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia; CHARLES SHABACON/UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY was. get a taste of it in a short 1968 film by Ed- a space ship, mountain-huge and trans- (212) 898-7108, icaphila.org. Sun Ra around 1954. Sun Ra was pretty grass roots too. In ward English called “Spaceways,” which parent as air, they lift off.